by Ivan Arce
The kernel is a fundamental piece of the operating system that provides and mediates access to a computer system’s resources. Naturally, such a critical component plays a key role in providing users a secure environment and should be subject to security practitioners’ scrutiny.
Although kernel bugs have had serious security implications for the past three decades, researchers have not studied their importance or the mechanics for discovering, exploiting, and fixing them as much as they’ve focused on other information technology infrastructure components. Yet, over the past several years, an increasing number of kernel security vulnerabilities have demonstrated that the most important component of today’s operating systems is not free of bugs when these vulnerabilities are exploited, serious security incidents ensue. In this installment of Attack Trends, I focus on kernel security issues, recent vulnerabilities, and the emergence of publicly available exploit code for them.